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Point is he is criticizing Google but still collecting checks from them. That's hypocritical. He would have a little sympathy if he never worked for them. He ha

Point is he is criticizing Google but still collecting checks from them. That's hypocritical. He would have a little sympathy if he never worked for them. He had decades to resign. He didn't. He stayed there until retirement. He's even using gmail in that post.

tczMUFlmoNk 10mo ago
Rob Pike retired from Google in 2021.
- ptero 10mo ago
  Yes, after working there for more than 17 years (IIRC he joined Google in 2004).
rdiddly 10mo ago
I still don't see the problem. You can criticize things you're part of. Probably being part of something is what informs a person enough, and makes it matter enough to them, to criticize in the first place.
- ptero 10mo ago
  > I still don't see the problem. You can criticize things you're part of. Certainly. But this, IMO, is not the reason for the criticism in the comments. If Rob ranted about AI, about spam, slop, whatever, most of those criticizing his take would nod instead. However, the one and only thing that Rob says in his post is "fuck you people who build datacenters, you rape the planet". And this coming from someone who worked at Google from 2004 to 2021 and instead could have picked any job anywhere. He knew full well what Google was doing; those youtube videos and ad machines were not hosted in a parallel universe. I have no problem with someone working at Google on whatever with full knowledge that Google is pushing ads, hosting videos, working on next gen compute, LLM, AGI, whatever. I also have no problem with someone who rails against cloud compute, AI, etc. and fights it as a colossal waste or misallocation of resources or whatever. But not when one person does both. Just my 2c, not pushing my worldview on anyone else.
watwut 10mo ago
It is OK to collect checks from organization you are criticising. Getting money from someome does not imply you must only praise them.
- Imustaskforhelp 10mo ago
  I know right? If rob pike was asked about these issues of systemic addiction and others where we can find things google was bad at. I am sure that he wouldn't defend google about these things. Maybe someone can mail a real message asking Rob pike genuinely (without any snarkiness that I feel from some comments here) about some questionable google things and I am almost certain that if those questions are reasonable, rob pike will agree that some actions done by google were wrong. I think its just that rob pike got pissed off because an AI messaged him so he got the opportunity to talk about these issues and I doubt that he got the opportunity to talk / someone asking him about some other flaws of google / systemic issues related to it. Its like, Okay, I feel like there is an issue in the world so I talk about it. Now does that mean that I have to talk about every issue in the world, no not really. I can have priorities in what issues I wish to talk about. But that being said, if someone then asks me respectfully about issues which are reasonable, Being moral, I can agree about that yes those are issues as well which needs work upon. And some people like rob pike who left google because of (ideological reasons perhaps, not sure?) wouldn't really care about the fallback and like you say, its okay to collect checks from organization even if they critize Honestly Google's lucky that they got rob pike instead of vice versa from my limited knowledge. Golang is such a brilliant language and ken thompson and rob pike are consistently some of the best coders and their contributions to golang and so many other projects is unparalleled. I don't know much about rob pike as compared to Ken thompson but I assume he is really great too! Mostly I am just a huge golang fan.
  - trinsic2 10mo ago
    I know this will probably not come off very well in this community. But there is something to be said about criticizing the very thing you are supporting. I know in this day and age, its not easy to survive without contributing to the problem in some degree. Im not saying nobody has the right to criticize something they are supporting, but it does say something about our choices and how far we let this problem go before it became too much to solve. And not saying the problem isn't solvable. Just saying its become astronomically more difficult now then ever before. I think at the very least, there is a little bit of cringe in me every time I criticize the very thing I support in some way.

tczMUFlmoNk 10mo ago

Rob Pike retired from Google in 2021.

ptero 10mo ago
Yes, after working there for more than 17 years (IIRC he joined Google in 2004).

rdiddly 10mo ago

I still don't see the problem. You can criticize things you're part of. Probably being part of something is what informs a person enough, and makes it matter enough to them, to criticize in the first place.

ptero 10mo ago
> I still don't see the problem. You can criticize things you're part of. Certainly. But this, IMO, is not the reason for the criticism in the comments. If Rob ranted about AI, about spam, slop, whatever, most of those criticizing his take would nod instead. However, the one and only thing that Rob says in his post is "fuck you people who build datacenters, you rape the planet". And this coming from someone who worked at Google from 2004 to 2021 and instead could have picked any job anywhere. He knew full well what Google was doing; those youtube videos and ad machines were not hosted in a parallel universe. I have no problem with someone working at Google on whatever with full knowledge that Google is pushing ads, hosting videos, working on next gen compute, LLM, AGI, whatever. I also have no problem with someone who rails against cloud compute, AI, etc. and fights it as a colossal waste or misallocation of resources or whatever. But not when one person does both. Just my 2c, not pushing my worldview on anyone else.

watwut 10mo ago

It is OK to collect checks from organization you are criticising. Getting money from someome does not imply you must only praise them.

Imustaskforhelp 10mo ago
I know right? If rob pike was asked about these issues of systemic addiction and others where we can find things google was bad at. I am sure that he wouldn't defend google about these things. Maybe someone can mail a real message asking Rob pike genuinely (without any snarkiness that I feel from some comments here) about some questionable google things and I am almost certain that if those questions are reasonable, rob pike will agree that some actions done by google were wrong. I think its just that rob pike got pissed off because an AI messaged him so he got the opportunity to talk about these issues and I doubt that he got the opportunity to talk / someone asking him about some other flaws of google / systemic issues related to it. Its like, Okay, I feel like there is an issue in the world so I talk about it. Now does that mean that I have to talk about every issue in the world, no not really. I can have priorities in what issues I wish to talk about. But that being said, if someone then asks me respectfully about issues which are reasonable, Being moral, I can agree about that yes those are issues as well which needs work upon. And some people like rob pike who left google because of (ideological reasons perhaps, not sure?) wouldn't really care about the fallback and like you say, its okay to collect checks from organization even if they critize Honestly Google's lucky that they got rob pike instead of vice versa from my limited knowledge. Golang is such a brilliant language and ken thompson and rob pike are consistently some of the best coders and their contributions to golang and so many other projects is unparalleled. I don't know much about rob pike as compared to Ken thompson but I assume he is really great too! Mostly I am just a huge golang fan.
- trinsic2 10mo ago
  I know this will probably not come off very well in this community. But there is something to be said about criticizing the very thing you are supporting. I know in this day and age, its not easy to survive without contributing to the problem in some degree. Im not saying nobody has the right to criticize something they are supporting, but it does say something about our choices and how far we let this problem go before it became too much to solve. And not saying the problem isn't solvable. Just saying its become astronomically more difficult now then ever before. I think at the very least, there is a little bit of cringe in me every time I criticize the very thing I support in some way.